By: Tori Montano
For this assignment I shadowed Milla Sue Wisecarver, the Assistant Director of Athletics Communication for women’s basketball, men and women’s soccer and women’s lacrosse, at the men’s soccer game on October 14 against the University of Delaware. I arrived at University Fields press box a little before 1pm for the 2pm kick-off. Here, I met Milla Sue, members of her staff and part of the marketing team.
Although it was an hour before the game started, the energy in the press box was high as Milla Sue and staff prepared for the match. She explained that the pre-game set-up was an essential part of her job in order to make sure everything during the game ran as smoothly as possible. She began by making sure she had enough copies of the starting lineups for both of teams and that they were distributed to the appropriate places. During this time I noticed that she had two different computers and I asked her what each was for. She told me that she used one to manually enter all of the live stats into a program called Statcrew which then calculates and keeps track of each players stats. She later uses this information to write stories on these players. On the other computer she pulls up any other CAA soccer game being played that day. Milla Sue was also constantly on her walkie-talkie during this time making sure everyone and everything was in place.
Things began to calm-down a little when the game started, but I was still amazed to see Milla Sue and her spotter manually record every play that happened during the 90-minute game and the 20-minutes of overtime. They track everything from who is on the field, who took the shot, where they took the shot from, who passed it to them before. One of things I found the most difficult about this was that sometimes they had to decide the intent of a players actions. For example, if a player meant to shoot the ball on goal and it should count for a shot stat for them or if they just kicked it and it happened to go towards the goal.
Milla Sue and her spotter are also responsible for tweeting various updates during the game. However, Milla explained that there were very strict guidelines on tweeting during games, like what language to use, hashtags to use, and when it was appropriate. She said that the spotter mainly tweets when a goal is scored, if a player has a personal accomplishment and then at the beginning, half-time and end of the game.
Unfortunately, there was no press at this particular game. Though, Milla Sue explained that if they were present, they would conduct post-game interviews on the field on the “bench side.” These interviews begin after a 10-minute cooling off period once the game is over. At the end of the game Milla and her staff are also responsible for making sure each team gets a copy of the stats as well as the officials of the game.
I learned a lot through this job shadowing experience about what it would be like to be on the staff of a sports communication team. Something so simple, but so important was the absolute rule that you cannot cheer in the press box (I learned the hard way). But besides that, there are so many different things that Milla Sue had to be on top of in order to report the most accurate statistics and information about the game. It is obvious to see that you must be totally dedicated to the job because of the time commitment and weekend/night hours. This job is also one that you must have great multi-tasking abilities, attention to detail and ability to manage tedious information. Personally, after shadowing Milla Sue, I do not think this is a career I would pursue. However, I did get a lot of insight into the sports communication field and had a great time learning more about it.